Submission Training (1)
Saturday night. The women's dormitory at Cheonmu Academy.
Even though it was an hour when she should have long since drifted off, Choi Marie lay curled up inside her blankets, wide awake.
A long time had passed since she'd lain down, and yet sleep refused to come easily.
...In the dorm room, where the soft snoring of her roommate drifted through the air, Choi Marie was thinking about her promise with her junior, Seonho—the one set for tomorrow.
That weird training we did last time... There's no way he's making me do it again, right?
He'd suddenly treated her like some kind of puppy and made her crawl around on the floor.
He'd told her to hold a defensive stance, only to start tickling her out of nowhere.
Looking back on it with any degree of cool-headedness, it had been a little strange for something called "training." At least among everything she knew as a second-year at the Academy, she'd never once heard of endurance drills conducted that way.
Granted, in a sense, it had certainly cultivated her patience in a variety of ways. When Seonho treated her like a pet, the urge to give up welled up in her mind; and when the tickling started, it flooded her body. Her patience was being trained, all right—just not in any way she'd expected.
...Honestly, if it hadn't shown results, she would have refused such an idiotic exercise on the spot and demanded he train her a different way.
But it definitely worked. That's what matters.
Choi Marie replayed the praise she'd received from her professors over the past week in her head.
Her impulsive movements had decreased noticeably. She'd shown the will to act rationally even in the final moments. She'd held her position to the very end, and her crisis-response skills were solid.
Nearly all of it was praise for how much her shield play had improved. And the only thing she herself had actually done was suppress the burning impulse in her chest once or twice during class.
Hearing that she'd improved just by not doing anything, Choi Marie couldn't help but think positively of that training from last week.
Let's just take it a couple more times. Besides, I still owe Seonho, anyway.
The memory of the moment her junior had nearly died because of her recklessness still haunted her, vivid enough that she doubted it would ever truly fade.
It wasn't just about correcting mistakes in training—she needed to learn to control her impulses the way Seonho had insisted, or she'd fail in real combat too.
And Seonho had gone out of his way to prepare this special training just for her, so logically speaking, she had no reason to refuse.
...Well, if there was one problem, it was that every time she recalled that training session, her face inexplicably flushed hot.
"Hah... nngh..."
With her eyes closed, memories of the last session drifted up unbidden.
As she thought of Seonho's hands at her side, under her arms, along the inside of her thighs, her legs unconsciously clenched tight.
...Without even realizing it herself, Choi Marie quietly slid her hand beneath her underwear.
-Rub.
"Ngh... hnn...!"
Her underwear was already soaked. The moment her fingertip brushed her sweat-damp clitoris, a moan escaped her before she could stop it.
Startled by that unusually sensitive sensation, her whole body jerked—and immediately, her eyes landed on her roommate sleeping in the next bed.
...What was I just about to do?
Thank goodness she'd come to her senses, even if belatedly. She'd come dangerously close to masturbating right there in the dorm room.
Thanks to the last thread of reason still clinging to her, she'd managed to stop in time, but her body remained tense, her pounding heart refusing to settle down.
Get a grip, Choi Marie. You're not some pervert.
Just because it had felt like something while he pretended to hypnotize her and tickled her... For a girl as proud as Choi Marie, that was a wall she absolutely refused to accept.
She shook her head as if to shake off the thought, telling herself there was no way she had tastes that depraved, fixed her posture, and quietly pulled the blanket up to her chin.
It's just training. Just training. Don't think weird things.
What would she even do if she messed up in front of Seonho because she'd let her mind wander somewhere inappropriate?
With that thought, she closed her eyes again and quietly let sleep take her.
"......"
Unaware, even as she drifted off, that the corner of her mouth had curled ever so slightly upward.
Sunday morning.
A vague, deep-seated fatigue clung to me as I finally dragged myself upright at the sound of my alarm.
Between everything over the past few days, exhaustion had piled up somewhere in my body—half-noticeable, half-not.
Just this weekend alone had been packed tight: club activities, training Min Ye-won, and a date with Ma Nayeon on top of everything else.
And today I have to drag Marie out for conditioning too.
I was cycling through girls with barely a moment to breathe. If I'd had three bodies, I could've taken things a little slower.
Even the original story's Seo Woojin didn't run himself this ragged. Of course, the original Seo Woojin had a far more properly awakened ability than me, and he never went scrambling around trying to seduce villains and background extras.
Still, I've got to push through. I started this, after all.
Dragging my aching body out of bed, I threw on workout clothes and headed for the track where I always met Choi Marie.
I had a fair amount to get through with her today. Time to get moving.
"Junior, put more power in your legs! It keeps slipping, doesn't it?!"
"Hahh—y-yes, ma'am...!!"
We'd met early in the morning, just like always, and the training had carried on from there.
After days of accumulated fatigue, my body was already close to its limit, but I kept it hidden as best I could and somehow kept my feet moving.
The one saving grace was that thanks to my self-buff, I barely felt any pain. That didn't stop the fatigue from actually accumulating, though—the weariness I felt was more than double what it normally would be.
After about an hour of nonstop laps around the track, I didn't have the strength left to stay standing, so I did the slightly pathetic thing and dropped straight onto the ground.
"Hahh... hahh... haaahh..."
"...Junior, you're going down easier than usual today. You been slacking on your training lately?"
"I've... been a little busy lately... S-sorry..."
"...Well, it's not like you owe me an apology."
I apologized as sincerely as I could manage, and Choi Marie averted her gaze with an awkward expression.
Slacking on training was only true by Choi Marie's standards—yesterday and the day before, I'd squeezed in conditioning whenever I found a spare moment.
The problem was that the intensity and growth rate were hopelessly inadequate compared to what an individual Physical Enhancement Type would call training. That was simply a cross every Mental Type had to bear.
And Choi Marie knew by now that I had the best physical stats of any Mental ability user anyway, so she couldn't really scold me too harshly.
"You've got to build your stamina steadily, junior. Otherwise how are you planning to pass Professor Shin Youngjoo's class this semester?"
"...H-ahaha."
"That professor's infamous even among Physical Enhancement Types—mental types dropping his course in the first week is practically the standard playbook. If you've made up your mind to take it, you'd better see it through to the end, junior."
"...Yeah, I suppose I should."
The memory of that professor's pointlessly passionate face rose in my mind, and a hollow laugh slipped out of me. At the very least, I'd be staring at that face through late April and into early May.
In our last class, he'd stuck to my side the entire session, saying it was the first time in years a mental type hadn't dropped his course.
Getting close with professors was both a blessing and a curse—in the world I came from and at hunter academies alike, that much never really changed.
"Haah... Hey, sunbae. Speaking of which—you didn't forget about today, did you?"
"...No. I didn't forget."
"If my place is uncomfortable for you, we could train somewhere else. You seemed kind of uncomfortable last time you came over, too."
"S-somewhere else? Wh-where exactly would you even do that kind of trai—"
"Hm?"
"......Nothing. Never mind."
Choi Marie turned her head away, her face going red, as if she'd just recalled that little "Impulse Suppression Training" session from last time.
She probably wasn't going to suggest moving locations, not at this point. That training was a bit too... awkward to conduct anywhere else, for a number of reasons.
She couldn't exactly do it in her dorm room after refusing the training grounds, and renting out some motel for it would be an even worse look.
"...Forget it. We'll just do it at your place."
"Are you sure that's all right?"
"Yeah, doesn't matter to me. And what about your place, it's—"
"Then come to my house around lunchtime again today."
"......Right."
Today, we're making some real progress.
Last time had ended with nothing more than tickling-level skinship, but I had no intention of being that wishy-washy today.
Marie was the heroine I'd known the longest, and the fact that I hadn't even managed proper physical contact with her yet was honestly a little comical.
I needed to move things along as fast as possible while her guilt toward me was still fresh. So that the devotion toward me engraved under Suggestion would persist and keep working even after the suggestion itself had worn off.
After all, I'd gone out of my way to buy her a maid outfit just for this. A full set, too—underwear included, so she could dress the part properly from the inside out.
Imagining Marie, whom I'd be conditioning to my heart's content all afternoon, I gritted my teeth and pushed through the rest of the morning workout.
About two hours after finishing my morning training—10 a.m.
After confirming the familiar silhouette through the intercom, I opened the door, and Choi Marie with her pink ponytail stepped into my entryway.
"Come on in, sunbae."
"...Thanks for having me."
Her second visit, following last time.
She came in with her gaze darting here and there, a touch uneasy.
Between the pet treatment and the tickling she'd endured on her first visit, some lingering wariness was only natural. Not that it mattered—today, I planned to strip that wariness away completely.
She was radiating a fresh, soapy scent—she must have showered the moment we'd parted ways.
"Your outerwear, please, sunbae. I'll hang it up for you."
"......Sure."
Wearing a strangely hesitant expression, Choi Marie carefully unzipped her long padding and handed it over.
Any lingering question about what felt off was resolved the moment her coat came off. The clothes she was wearing underneath were, to anyone's eyes, unmistakably a training outfit.
"Sunbae? You didn't change out of your workout clothes?"
"Th-these are spares! I even sh-showered before coming, so don't get any weird ideas."
"Really? Then why are you wearing the same outfit as this morning's training?"
"...Well. I came here to train anyway, so I figured something comfortable would be better."
This was only her second visit, and she'd already dressed herself in comfortable clothes without being asked—clearly, she'd been looking forward to today's session quite a bit.
And if what Choi Marie wanted was that, then naturally, I had no choice but to live up to her expectations.